User talk:MidnightLightning
You are now an admin! As mentioned on the community portal, you are now an admin! You are also a bureaucrat, which means that you can make new admins if you need them using . Take care, and if you need any help, please leave a note for me on Central! Mindspillage (spill yours?) 18:45, 28 March 2006 (UTC) How did you do that?! I've recently revisted this site and found a lot of awesome wiki stuff going on! I'm interested how you got the random roll of Template:DieRoll to work and how to get the if statements to work from Template:DMG22. Could you point me in the direction of some instructions on how to implement them on my site? I've spend a bunch of time looking it up on my own and I'm finding the templates here a bit to complex to follow. Many thanks! --Wizardoest 03:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC) :Okay, to explain Template:DieRoll, I borrowed the die rolling JavaScript from d20srd.org and modified it to allow dice rolls like 3d10*5 in addition to 3d6+14 and 2d4-2. In order to use this JavaScript in a Wikicities Wiki, I had to jump through a few hoops. If your wiki is your own website, you have more freedom, and your best bet is to use an extension to get the JavaScript onClick command attached to the link text. The one I wrote for my wiki is: setHook( "roll", "rollDice" ); } # The callback function for converting the input text to HTML output function rollDice( $input, $argv ) { $output = "".$input.""; return $output; } ?> :Then, if I use Attack! it will create the dice link, and then I added the JavaScript to the Monobook header to have it be available on every page. :For working with WikiCities, where I can't just install an extension, I added the JavaScript to the Monobook.js file (which you can access via MediaWiki:Monobook.js, though only SysOps can edit it). And, because I can't define an onClick attribute using Wikitext (it will get stripped off of any HTML tag you put in the aticle body), I had to use some clever JavaScript to, onLoad of the page, find all tags of a specific class, and dynamically add an onClick attribute to them. So, the Template:DieRoll sets up the span with the correct class, and encodes into the class the title and dice code, which the onLoad JavaScript puts into an onClick when the page loads. :That all make sense? :) --MidnightLightning 15:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC) ---- I came to your talk page to ask you about the dice roller, and found this thread. I don't have the knowledge to repeat what you did, but I'm trying to get a die roller on my campaign wiki, where I am in much the same situation as at WikiCities. Would it be possible for you to post 1) the JavaScript you posted to Monobook.js, 2) the "clever JavaScript" mentioned above? If you could, I would be very grateful. ACodispo 02:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC) :I've just realized how silly my question was. I've gone to Monobook.js and seen the code for myself. Sorry, still getting used to the openness of a Wiki. Forgive the annoyance! Also, any idea whether or not the code, as it stands now, should work with MediaWiki 5.5? Or is it limited to 6? -- ACodispo 02:33, 16 June 2006 (UTC) :The javascript should stand up just fine in MediaWiki 5.5; the only real earth-shattering change to the 6.0 version (at least from the point of view of how I write code) was the added functionality of having a default value for variables in templates. This function does use a template, but not that feature, so it should work out. --MidnightLightning 13:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC) Mass Vandalism Hey, could you take care of the IP vandalizing recently? It's a bit much to do by hand... I understand the admin control panel is pretty good about mass reverting. While I'm at it, any chance I might be able to be made admin too, in case this comes up again and I see it while you're out? Fieari 02:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC) :There is no mass un-edit command (and no admin 'control panel' either). Though through chatting with the Wikia admins, I did get a few extra hands to make light work of undoing 71.107.251.78's mischief. That IP address has been blocked (making two on the list of mass vandals this Wiki has gotten), so shouldn't happen again anytime soon. Some of the edits included advertisements from Bobby Boulders for the International Society of Vandals (ISV) (sample here). I reported this to Wikia and they recognized the name as one who was on their IRC chat yesterday making threats and promises of attacks against Wikia and Wikipedia, so they're currently searching more more Wikia wikis that were hit by this guy/gal. :Regarding your other comment about becoming an administrator, I've posted your request for nomination to the Community Portal page, and we'll see if there's anyone else has any comments on your nomination. --MidnightLightning 15:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC) We've been hit one more time by Bobby, who this time created a User Account, and vandalized 39 pages on this wiki. They have all been reverted (thanks to a lot of help from Stanoje), and that user account blocked. --MidnightLightning 16:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC) :"Stanjoe"? :-) --Stanoje ::My apologies, Stanoje, my Americanized mind apparently wanted to see the names "Stan" and "Joe" in your name, rather than what was really in front of me. Spelling corrected above. --MidnightLightning 14:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC) :::No worries. It's not the first time, believe me :-) --JoeStan Skill and DieRoll I have stopped using the and format because when I need to edit the StatDMG2 template, it erases those section after the first word (skill and dieroll, repsectively). When editing an NPC with a great number of skill this becomes and infuriatingly inefficient use of time, despite its convenience after all is said and done. Darkxarth 03:20, September 14, 2009 (UTC) :You mean when you click "Edit this page" on an NPC that is using the StatDMG2 template, in the wikitext source you're seeing the second half of the actual function disappearing? If that's the case, it sounds like your web browser is to blame; are you using Firefox with some custom extensions like Grease Monkey editing page content on load, or trying to auto-fill forms for you? Could you point to an article that is doing that for you right now, as I don't think I've ever experienced that on the browsers I've been using. --MidnightLightning 23:29, September 14, 2009 (UTC) ::Yes. I click "Edit this page" and then I click the StatDMG2 box to edit it, and the "Skills" section just says " function. I am using the latest update of Internet Explorer (8 I think, whichever one is the newest). I do not have "AutoComplete" turned on. The Devoted Cultist CR 1 page is doing this as I type. Darkxarth 01:00, September 15, 2009 (UTC) Through further discussions with Darkxarth, we found out this is a bug with the the Wikia Rich Text Editor not liking Templates within Templates. I filed a bug report with Wikia, and hopefully they'll fix it eventually. In the meantime, to use the StatDMG2 template, you can either turn off the Rich Text Editor (in your Preferences, under the "More" link in the upper-right of the page), or in the Rich Text Editor, click the upper-right button that enables you to view the source wikitext to edit the page, rather than use the popup template-editor. --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 16:48, November 23, 2009 (UTC) Possible spin-off Hey there, We were thinking, over at The Dungeons and Dragons Wiki, of possibly spinning off our NPC sections over to you guys. We have a few reasons for this sort of thing, namely better focus on our strengths (which NPCs are not) and better cooperation among wikis that really should be considered sister wikis; NPCs are also not even second-class citizens on our site, so they'd make more sense over here. That said, if you're interested in doing this with us, I have a couple of concerns. First of all, I am really quite concerned about the fact that the NPC lists aren't automatically generated -- if I direct somebody over here for adding their NPCs, they not only have to add the NPC but they also have to go and add it to the right table. (For that matter, D20 NPCs by Primary Character Class isn't automatically updated either.) Secondly, I'm concerned about just how difficult it is to add an NPC here. First I have to click on the link on the front page, read that entire wall of text, then type something in to the search bar (and because I'm a moron I'll probably get the page name wrong), then copy/paste the formatting from some other page and...blah! Why can't there just be a preload or three like our wiki has that does all that work for you, so you only have to fill in the appropriate parts of the form and the template (which I notice you have, but not all that many pages use)? I'm really concerned about referring people over here for that reason. My final issue is the rule over no 4e NPCs, though my wiki doesn't have any of those yet anyway. If you'd like to chat about this sometime, please hop over to our chat room (linked from the front page of our wiki) -- it would be great to get more sister-wiki cooperation going on here. (It would also be cool to get all the Dungeons & Dragons Wikia users into one chat room!) Surgo 03:32, November 17, 2009 (UTC) :I was thinking of that myself, and wondering if it would be a good fit to have actual NPC stats on this wiki, while custom class and race definitions (potentially used by those creations) stay on the Dungeons and Dragons wiki. Indexing the NPCs has been an inherent stumbling block that hasn't yet had an extremely automated solution, but here's the situation as we've found it. :When searching for NPCs, you sometimes want to browse for all NPCs within a certain CR level, belonging to a certain class, race, or creature type. So, it would be ideal for the wiki to provide those ways for a searching DM to drill down for an NPC via any of those methods. However, as you mentioned, having flat pages for those indexes means that whenever a creature gets added, they have to be indexed in 4 or more places. MediaWiki Categories almost work perfectly for an automated system. When creating a creature, it would be great to add several category links, and have searchers able to traverse the category tree. The problem arises in naming. If you have a Gnome Sorcerer 8 named Plucky you want to create, you can create the article name as just "Plucky" (as the Dungeons and Dragons wiki seems to do for NPC articles, just name them the name of the creature). If you add that article to the Gnome category, you'd see "Plucky" in that list, and you'd know they're a gnome, but from the category listing, you wouldn't know their CR or class without visiting each article in the category. To get around that, people name their articles with several bits of information in the title. So Plucky would become "Gnome Sorcerer 8 'Plucky'" or something similar. But now in the Gnome category he'll be sorted under the "G"s, and having 'gnome' in the title is redundant for that category, but is still useful for the Sorcerer category. Plus, sorting alphabetically in the CR listing is ideal, but in the other categories, sorting by CR would likely be better than alphabetical. A solution was proposed that multiple articles be created for each actual NPC, each with a different title, optimized for the particular categories, and categorize those stubs rather than the main article. ("Plucky (Gnome Sorcerer 8)" for the CR listing and Sorcerer listing, "Plucky (Sorcerer 8)" for the Gnome category and Humanoid). But now we're back to adding more work for the original poster to create stub articles and categorizing them, and all categories still sort alphabetically, rather than by CR. :So currently we have both systems in place; there are the category trees starting at Category:D20_NPCs for delving deep that way, as well as the static pages serving as indexes for those search methods. If you know of any MediaWiki extensions that would make that easier, feel free to suggest it. I've been leaning on people to use the Category system, and indeed the stat block templates do automatically link to the appropriate category from the text in the stat block, but if there was something that better automated/customized the Categories, that would be a more ideal situation. :Regarding the actual page creation, I was looking at the "inputbox" method you have implemented for character creation, and gave it a try on the DMG2 Stat block template, which seems to be working out well, so I'll likely add one for the other stat blocks, and modify NPC Templates to have creation boxes there for each of the boxes, and change the tutorial on the main help page. --MidnightLightning 05:38, November 17, 2009 (UTC) ::You can use the extension DynamicPageList2 (which we do) to automatically generate lists like the one I am referring to based on category membership. You can also the extension Semantic MediaWiki (which we do) to do the same thing, but also add semantic properties to that in additional to category membership. Finally, I had one other concern -- you don't seem to have an author template for marking authorship (or do you, but I've missed it). Surgo 12:39, November 17, 2009 (UTC) :::Thanks for the suggestion; I put in a request for those to be added to this wiki so we can give them a try. It looks like the SemanticDrilldown that can go alongside the Semantic Web extension might do what we need for this wiki. Also, I have updated the NPC Templates page to have createboxes for all the templates, which does work out much smoother. This wiki doesn't have an Authorship template, since generally the wiki does that for you (just look at the history tab and see who created the page, or check a user's Contributions page). I can see how with a wiki on creating custom classes and wanting to maintain balance, you can't have people editing helter-skelter since that could change the balance of that class/race. But here where most of the creations are just applying class levels or more hit dice to something, edits happening after initial creation are usually along the lines of "the original creator got their math wrong; I'll fix it" rather than "wouldn't it be cool if this creature could do this!", so I think having a banner for "this is mine, don't make drastic edits without checking with me about the intent of this piece" wouldn't be that productive on this wiki. However, having a banner for "I'm in the process of creating this new entry in the wiki and am not done yet; I know my math is wrong in some places and there's some omissions, but give me chance to fix them first" for new page creations could be useful, as I've seen authors take a few days or a week to get all their content for a new entry organized. --MidnightLightning 15:23, November 17, 2009 (UTC) ::::I didn't realize you could export the history as well with Special:Export (an obvious feature in retrospect) -- which removes a lot of my author template concerns. Once you start getting pages dynamically generated, I'll be interested in starting to spin off our NPC section. Surgo 15:58, November 17, 2009 (UTC) About the Logo Hey, I'm an admin over at The Dungeons and Dragons Wiki, and with all these talks of merging NPCs over here, I've been poking around. I took notice of the logo here, and I think it could stand to be way sweeter. I'm a graphic designer/artist, and I worked up the logo and a few other things over there on our wiki. If you are interested, I'm offering my services over here and will work with you to update your logo if you'd like (free of charge, of course). --Ganteka Future 23:52, November 17, 2009 (UTC) :I'm the one who originally created the T-Shirt logo for this wiki, though that was mostly because no one else had stepped up to do it. I have a graphic design background as well, though haven't taken the time to do a full logo design process for the site. If you'd like to come up with some ideas, I'd be fine with putting it to the community for a vote. The colors could be changed around too, as I relatively arbitrarily picked from the default skins that Wikia provided, so if in your design process you come up with a non gray/gold/green theme, that could be put to a vote too. --MidnightLightning 04:03, November 18, 2009 (UTC) ::Alrighty, cool. I'll try and get off my bum and get some roughs together in the next day or two. See what I can come up with. Though, for the color scheme, how does dropping the green for a red sound (a fairly DnD oriented color), probably (Fire Brick) or (Dark Red)? Also, maybe tone the current gold to (Goldenrod). --Ganteka Future 22:20, November 18, 2009 (UTC) ::I'd make sure that any "red" used is geared as a "d20" red, rather than a "D&D" red, since this wiki is d20-based, not D&D based (as Dungeons is). I tried the T-shirt logo as a red shirt with the d20 logo (play off the Star Trek expendable redshirts), but that washed out the red of the actual d20 logo and made it much less significant, which is why I went with a muted compliment color (green). I'd say in addition to red and gold, it would still need at least one other major color to play off of, though which is the primary and which two are accents could be explored. --MidnightLightning 22:48, November 18, 2009 (UTC) :::Logo roughs :::I've been all over the place with this project the past few days, trying to figure out a core thematic element for the logo. At first, I was heavy into the red, black and white of the d20 system logo. However, I began moving away from that (and even after some checking around, I'm not even sure if its still kosher to use the d20 system logo for stuff anymore). Regardless of the hazy legality of using the d20 system logo, it would be in your best interest for branding your site as its own entity to establish brand identity. So yeah, I was playing around with colors (the gold and red combo looks like ketchup and mustard, which isn't good). The greens, grays and gold however had a nice feel to it, though, not sure if that's something you want. I still like the idea of the redshirts (those guys crack me up, poor extras). So, I did a bunch of expirimentation and slapped 'em all onto a small file for rough viewing. If any of these directions strike your fancy let me know (or if anyone else is reading this and would like to chime in). Heck, that is one question I had, for starting a discussion page for this rather than cluttering up your talk page, and thus allowing other users who might want to get in on designing logos of their own. So, should a discussion page get started for this? Also, let me know what you think of what's coming along so far. --Ganteka Future 04:33, November 23, 2009 (UTC) Discussion thread has been created over here --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 17:11, November 23, 2009 (UTC) Rulebooks You may wish to link to my wiki for those -- we're in the process of building a comprehensive publishing library. The links will eventually be (as soon as we get the namespace) Publication:Book Name. Surgo 22:30, November 20, 2009 (UTC) How Goes the Overhaul? Just curious how everything is coming along. I have to do a non-bot semantic overhaul for our classes and prestige classes myself. It's annoying. Surgo 22:48, December 19, 2009 (UTC) :I think the general structure has stabilized, with the recent changes I made to the NPC templates to accommodate different types of spellcasters, in addition to the automatic Semantic tagging. When Wikia upgrades to a version of SMW that supports the "category" list type, I think everything will be perfect. Though it looks like some of the other 'regulars' from this wiki (Fieari, Generic Fighter, and PsiSeveredHead) haven't actually made any edits in a while (though I see they've logged in more recently), so this community may do well by an extra infusion of advertising and getting the word out, and bringing in fresh content from your wiki's users could help that. --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 14:19, January 4, 2010 (UTC) Re: God Appearence I found your point valid, so I implemented it. Newbie... Hey, I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I put up an NPC for the High Priest project, but can't figure out how to get it into the list of High Priests -- the formatting was not cooperating with me. Have I mentioned I'm new to this wiki contribution thing? Also, I'm new to this wiki contribution thing. Anyway, I hope I haven't fouled anything up, and I plan to add more stuff as time allows. Bygrinstow 17:19, June 20, 2010 (UTC) :Well hello and welcome; thanks for your addition! You definitely haven't fouled things up, at least not yet ;) The High Priest Project is an article, just like your NPC submission, so you can edit it in the same way. That page then has Wikilinks to all the articles that represent the high priests and bishops. So all that's needed to add a priest/bishop is to edit that page and add a link. A wikilink in its most basic format is the name of the article to be linked to, surrounded by two square brackets (like this). For more help on general wikitext formatting, take a look at this help page. Now, that sort of wiki link creates a generic link that just says the name of the article being linked to. In cases like the High Priest Project, here at the d20 NPCs wiki we have some templates (which are helper tools that write wikitext for you) that can make the links look quite snazzy. So, for this project, the listings of priests and bishops should be using the IndexLink template to give more information about the NPC being linked to than just the title of the article. I've added Tor Hiertaal under Fharlanghn where he belongs. Try editing that section (via the edit link on the right of the "Fharlanghn" headline) to see the code I put there that generates the link. I'll likely go into that article in the near future and convert the existing plain links into IndexLink links, as that presents a much nicer list to browse through (thanks for bringing that issue to my attention!). :So go ahead and add more content as you'd like, and don't worry about getting it perfect the first time. I'll keep an eye on your updates and tidy up anything that's grossly out of place, and I'm guessing you'll pick up on it quickly enough. Feel free to leave me another message if you have more questions! --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 22:59, June 20, 2010 (UTC) Spotlight Request Hi. d20 NPCs Wiki looks great, and I've added it to the spotlight list. It's up to you, but I would recommend that you take down the notice on your mainpage about the semantic mediawiki conversion; I believe it gives an impression of major organisational changes that is misleading; from what I can tell it's more of an ongoing project :). SMW is rarely used, even by experienced Wikians so I'm also not sure that most visitors will know what it is let alone how to help with it right off the bat. -- Wendy (talk) 04:34, July 5, 2010 (UTC) Hello Hello Midnight, I have posted my first two blogs for this site, and will be posting my first NPC for Star Wars in the next couple of days. I hope that this work is found to be interesting, and even helpful. I look forward to working with the rest of you all on such projects, and comments on my work. This will be my first time to share such things outside of my playing group, but I do hope others enjoy the creations soon to come. ''-- Patrick Lee Harmon 13:41, May 6, 2011 (UTC)Patrick Lee Harmon'' :Welcome! Glad you're wanting to contribute, though the "rest of us" at this wiki is pretty much just me. This is mostly a dead wiki as most editors left with the Wikia skin change. I keep an eye on it, but I won't be contributing new content to it. The majority of the D&D NPCs on this wiki are in the process of being moved to the D&D wiki, outside the Wikia iron fist. I'd encourage you to actually edit over there if you're not already set on creating content here. --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 15:45, May 6, 2011 (UTC) :Actually, on taking a look at your recent changes, you're interested in Star Wars RPG rather than D&D, so the external D&D wiki wouldn't be for you. Ah well. --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 16:00, May 6, 2011 (UTC) Metaron Hi! Sorry I read your post after the fact. Thank you by that way, I think everything is alright legally on my post, and I used the 'Death' template for my post so hopefully it looks alright. I do have a request if it's not too much? if you could delete the posts 'Metatron' and 'Metacrappy', I was having some issues with the editor, couldn't get it to link with the page and then the layout went crazy. I fixed them, but not before my frustration made multiple pages. Sorry. Thank you. Beefermatic 11:16, November 5, 2011 (UTC)Beefermatic :I've deleted those pages and "01" which also got created in the tangle. --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 21:53, November 8, 2011 (UTC)